Barbara E. Allen directed, produced, edited and co-wrote the 2005 Emmy-winning documentary Paper Trail: 100 Years of the Chicago Defender . The film was hosted by Harry J. Lennix and featured such notables as Earl Calloway, Robert Sengstacke and then-Senator Barack Obama. It celebrates the centennial of the Chicago Defender and skillfully chronicles the pivotal role this groundbreaking newspaper played in African American life not only in Chicago but throughout the United States during the 20th century. Beginning with the story of Robert Abbott, the Chicago Defender’s founder and editor, Paper Trail examines the newspaper’s tremendous influence on the Great Migration and the Civil Rights Movement—a period when its readership reached its height. The film also traces the loss of readers beginning in the 1960s as the Civil Rights Movement grew more militant and the Defender held a relatively conservative position on black politics and issues. It concludes with the paper’s present goal of regaining its position as the No. 1 African American newspaper.

A graduate of Columbia College, Allen began her career as a film editor for WNBC-TV in New York. She later moved to NBC affiliate WMAQ-TV in Chicago and then to the Chicago Public Broadcasting Station, WTTW, as engineer/editor/producer. In addition to producing the three-time Emmy Award-winning documentary Paper Trail: 100 Years of the Chicago Defender , Allen produced the critically acclaimed DuSable to Obama: Chicago’s Black Metropolis in 2010, Morning Due in 2007 (a film she not only produced but directed; it was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and the Chicago International Film Festival, and it won the Jury Prize for Best Film at the 2008 Langston Hughes Festival) and the 2006 Emmy-nominated documentary Standing on Common Ground: My Spring Break in New Orleans with her son Evan Allen Gessesse.

Allen also founded and serves as executive director of Middle Passage Productions Inc., a nonprofit media cooperative that promotes and produces multicultural programming. In this role, Allen has produced Urban Suite , a home-decorating program for budget-conscious city dwellers, and D-Tours , a cultural travel series highlighting the African Diaspora. In addition to these accomplishments, Allen created and produced the Emmy-nominated children’s program TechKnow Kids , and co-produced and edited the award-winning short film 12 Minutes and the cable award-winning series Inside Issues.

The Barbara E. Allen Papers document the making of the Emmy-winning documentary Paper Trail: 100 Years of the Chicago Defender (2005). The collection includes research materials, original uncut video interviews, audio interviews and interview transcripts. (However, in some cases, only portions of the interviews have been transcribed.) Interviews were conducted with such notables as Timuel Black, Earl Calloway, Joslyn DiPasalegne, Emil Jones, Tom Picou, Robert Sengstacke, Doris Saunders, Nathan McGill III and then-Senator Barack Obama. The Barbara E. Allen Papers also contains DVD and VHS versions of Paper Trail: 100 Years of the Chicago Defender and other documentaries by Allen including DuSable to Obama: Chicago’s Black Metropolis (2010) and Standing on Common Ground: My Spring Break in New Orleans (2006), a film collaboration with her son Evan Allen Gessesse.

Related papers at the Vivian G. Harsh Collection include the Abbott-Sengstacke Family Papers, the Ben Burns Papers, the Chester Commodore Papers, the Richard Durham Papers, the Marjorie Stewart Joyner Papers and the Doris E. Saunders Papers.